


How to Handle Shipboard Isolation

by Alienea



Series: I can’t believe you guys made a musical about my trauma [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Gore (not descriptive), I continue to be rude to lyfrassir edda :), Isolation, Mentions of Blood, mentions of knives, mentions of needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26272507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alienea/pseuds/Alienea
Summary: Escape from the Yggdrasil System was not smooth (could never have been smooth) for Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda
Series: I can’t believe you guys made a musical about my trauma [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661734
Comments: 12
Kudos: 167





	How to Handle Shipboard Isolation

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this deep into quarantine instead of at the beginning of quarantine does make Lyf's issues Hit Different so like ... take care of yourself but it shouldn't be *that* deep? All the same feel free to message me if you think I missed a tag.

Lyfrassir Edda was a man with a plan. Well. Gender was fake, but person with a plan didn’t rhyme. They had a schedule to stick to, and a plant to take care of, and a whole star system to really quickly escape while desperately attempting to get their warning out, and a rough direction to head in to get to another star system. Transport Police perks. They also had a black box sitting accusingly on their kitchen slash living room slash laundry room slash literally everything but bedroom and bathroom table. He also had a good enough programming system in the ship that he didn’t need to rely on his own shitty manual piloting skills to be able to get out of Yggdrasil. The ship they didn’t technically have- technically this was a joyride in a Transport Police confiscated ship. Lyf had never taken advantage of that particular perk of working for the Transport Police before, however, so they didn’t expect they’d get caught. They’d love to get caught, though. It would mean people were actually evacuating.

They had boxes and boxes of supplies and extra parts, and owner’s manuals and user’s manuals and memos about how to care for, strip, and repair this type of ship. They had fuel enough to get the Holt to Hoddmimis twice over, and they were just going to refuel and keep going. They had a boosted broadcaster and so much storage that they were indiscriminately downloading everything they could get their hands on. He felt bad for the person caught with this ship, but they’d checked. The privateer was very, very dead, and they weren’t going to ditch the best and fastest ship out of desire to respect the rights of the dead. They were also no longer respecting digital media rights, privacy rights, or anything else. Thank you, Alexandria, for leaving your code. Lyfrassir had repurposed it to carry their report as it gathered media, and limited the type of media, but without her it wouldn’t’ve happened. They would carry a sample of Yggdrasil out into the world. They had a purpose.

They didn’t have a pet, but that was just due to timing. Their lovely old queen had died peacefully of old age last year, and frankly, they were glad she didn’t have to spend her last days on a small spaceship. They had sort of thought about finding a cat to take out of the system with them but none of the neighbourhood strays had come when they had left out food on the balcony of their apartment, and one of them had run away when they had gotten close and so. No pet. A space marimo, in a covered bowl of water, and a succulent next to it, under the one sunlamp in the ship. Plants were good. Lyfrassir could probably remember to take care of plants. They didn’t have any concept of the time needed to get to another star system. They were aware of the types of ships that were shown in training, and had, regrettably, written fluency in the language of that system. It wasn’t regrettable now, but what they did to get it, well. They didn’t have enough time to tear apart the New Midgardian school system!

They did. Didn’t have the emotional energy for it, though. Fucking assigned life paths blah blah  _ blah _ fuck what if he had to take a whole new series of aptitude tests in a new system? Gods, that would suck. Ignoring the language barrier that would definitely fuck them over, apititude tests sucked the world over. Unless you were on Asgard. 

Behind them, the rainbow got louder. Odin was singing to them again. She wouldn’t stop, and the song sounded too sweet, so good, and if he hadn’t just seen her turn into a horrifying eldritch abomination in the Black Box, well. Maybe it would have worked. But they had seen it, and they knew better than to listen.

They didn’t look out the back cameras.

He was afraid that she would be there, swimming after the ship, opening her mouth, ready to eat them, and in their dreams she opens her mouth and the cries of a dying world come out, surrounding him in a cacophony of pleas that cannot be answered. They hear about the class nine alert on Hel- good for Fenrir, they think. Then they think about an eldritch monstrosity made of Fenrir and shudder. He doesn’t want to see that.

Lyf spends a lot of time with the gravity turned off, floating in a ball in the middle of their ship, wondering what his life is going to look like now.

Hoddmimus is empty when he lands. There’s no sign of the rainbow, and Odin is silent, but there’s also no one there. Lyf hopes they got out. Whatever happened to them, it means there’s no one to stop him from doing a little redecorating on his ship as it refills. So Lyf gets out the fancy, space-safe paint, the type that lasts forever and they’d normally never be able to afford in a million years, and programs the painting bots to give their ship a new paint job, and a new name.

The Holt is a good name, he thinks.

Lyfrassir Edda doesn’t know what time it is. According to the shipboard calendar, it’s only been a matter of weeks since their exodus. But they set alarms to wake themself up, and they’ve gone through enough of the sleep and wake cycles that they’ve decided to pass for days that it’s been months. Almost a year.

The rainbow still chases close behind, pulling at them. Singing to him. Singing his name, in Odin’s voice, a voice that has rapidly deteriorated, now. She hisses and screams and howls, trying to draw them back, but they want to go.

He wants to be free.

Lyf has never really been free before.

In their dreams, they think there is a monster.

When Lyf wakes, he doesn’t remember the dreams- just feels sweat cooling on skin and sheets, the covers thrown off and him, curled in a ball, desperately trying to get away from something that they cannot remember, a thing of knives and teeth and blood. 

When they’re awake, Lyf can’t decide if it’s a mercy or not that they don’t remember. In his dreams, Lyf knows it’s a mercy, and wonders who gave it to him. Lyf can’t decide if they would thank or fight whoever is giving them the cushion of ignorance. Every night, Odin is upset, and every night, when she sees them have to process and then remember, she hurries to hurt them before he can remember her lies.

Every night, she comes, and every night, she hurts them.

Odin keeps it different. Some nights, they are shown their moms- but it’s  _ not _ their moms, they know that somewhere deep inside, and that’s the only thing that keeps him from giving in the moment she threatens to torture his moms instead, or to slowly rend their souls, or slowly dissect the two of them-

or or or or or or or or it bleeds together it merges together as Odin warps probability and it is all happening and nothing is happening-

Lyf has to trust themself, trust the feeling deep inside them that says that his moms are dead, and these are facsimiles. They don’t react correctly, they’re just slightly wrong, and Lyf doesn’t know who Odin brings in to act the parts but it’s  _ not _ their parents. (They don’t know where that certainty comes from.)

Some nights, she doesn’t bother with other people, just straps them to a table and starts carving. Which, well, isn’t ideal. Training can only go so far.

(When they wake up, all they can remember is they don’t want to go to sleep.)

They just want to get out. Odin drips her blood into them, drags unknowable beings over and sacrifices them to replace Lyf’s blood with theirs as well, and rages when it doesn’t change them. They don’t know what she expects to change in them. The blood burns, but does nothing else.

(They don’t check for changes, in the morning. Why would they? They don’t remember.)

His dreams pass in a blur of blood and pain and refusals, over and over. She wants a herald, a conduit into the world, and he can not and will not be that for her. There will not be another system consumed because of Lyfrassir Edda.

While awake, Lyf takes up hobbies. It’s better than talking to the wall. Which, well, they technically also do, even if it’s just quoting along to movies. They need to pretend they’re getting some amount of mental stimulation. It’s funny, he says to the one stuffed animal he was able to bring(a dragon, curled around an egg, protective and caring and so, so soft). Before this, Lyf had never really wanted to spend time with others. They didn’t have the energy for social interaction, really, and got most of what they needed at work anyways. He had loved the weekends, free of the need to talk to people and interact and remember what people expected in social interactions.

So now that it wasn’t available, Lyf craved it.

They remembered the prisoners and the cuddle piles and the one time the power had gone out and craved that. Craved the touch, craved the talking, even missed the music. Lyf would trade a lot for the chance to be telling the prisoners to shut up again, because it would mean that he was at home.

He wanted to be at home.

They take up crocheting. Lyf remembers the comforts of home, the large and soft blankets, the comfortable gloves, the soft sweaters given at the beginning of every winter. (When their moms disappeared into the Resistance, they kept on leaving the sweaters). Lyf doesn’t have the right hooks, or the right yarn, and the replicator doesn’t really know what he’s asking for, but they still try, learning carefully and slowly, unwinding all the yarn at the end of the project, until finally he can get a smooth enough set of stitches to start actually creating.

They stop crocheting when they realize that they’re going to go through all of the supplies for the replicator. Lyf recycles the yarn.

In his bed, a small amigurumi cat joins the dragon.

Lyf tries embroidery next. Less thread, smaller needles, and hopefully he would be able to look at his clothes and feel like he wasn’t just wearing the same ten outfits over and over. They bleed a bit, onto the clothing, but it’s all covered up with the thread. Nothing incredibly fancy, but a bit of a pop, a bit of color, just to remind them that there is color outside of the pursuing rainbow.

(Their blood comes out rainbow.) There is only so much space for them to embroider on. And they can’t justify the amount of material that it would take to make new clothing and keep on going. The embroidery catches on the sharp edges of the furniture and the boxes that Lyf navigates between every day, rips and is ruined, and Lyf tears it all out and recycles it and is left with the holes.

Painting should enliven the living space, so Lyf paints the boxes, tries to make himself feel less like a rat in a warren and more like a horse in a field, or. Some such animal metaphor. Lyf was never very good with those, which might explain why the attempt to paint the boxes ends with them hyperventilating in their room. No matter what he tried to paint, it came out in swirls of rainbow and void, mixing and spreading. Lyf was almost certain that he didn’t even make those colors.

The Holt smells of paint thinner for weeks-months-some time afterward, and Lyf... Lyf lays in bed. On sheets they hadn’t made or changed, and stared at the ceiling.

  
  


They try to take up cooking but with no one else, it feels pointless.

  
  


There’s no answer on coms.

  
  


He can’t remember his nightmares.

  
  


Lyf can’t see the rainbow anymore.

(Does that mean they’re dying?)

  
  


The succulent was dead and had gone back to the soil.

The marimo was barely alive.

(The coms crackle into life.)


End file.
